Riazat Butt is a former religious affairs correspondent for the Guardian and presented the multi-award winning podcast Islamophonic. She is also a contributor for BBC Radio 2, 4 and the World Service. She starts an MA in War Studies this autumn.

ABY: Anyone But York for Archbishop of Canterbury

No sooner did the Archbishop of Canterbury announce that he was retiring than speculation started on who would replace him. Everyone's talking about John Sentamu being the obvious successor – but he is the wrong person for Lambeth Palace. Let me explain why.

But the Church of England – and the Anglican Communion – needs someone with a pastoral touch. It needs a man – and it will be a man, because the Church of England is years away from appointing a female bishop let alone a lady archbishop – who can be fair to all points of view rather than imposing absolutes on difficult issues, and someone who can put their personal beliefs aside for the greater good.

Sentamu has come out fighting on the issue of gay marriage and has become the darling of conservatives inside and outside the Church of England. But his views alienate and polarise: there are clergy and parishioners who would love to see same-sex relationships registered in places of worship. An archbishop is not a spokesman or a pundit to be wheeled out to comment on the hot topics of the day. His job, in fact, is an impossible one: to accept that some Anglicans will never agree on the issues of gender or homosexuality while at the same time holding everyone together on common issues such as the Millennium Development Goals and the persecution of minority Christian communities around the world.

Rowan Williams’s strength and weakness was his attempt to be fair to everyone, regardless of his own personal feelings. It was why the traditionalists liked him and the liberals hated him. Rather tellingly, the conservative evangelicals and Anglo-Catholics issued statements praising Williams and his legacy within hours of his retirement hitting the headlines. I’ve yet to receive anything from the liberals.